12 or 20 (second series) questions with Cathy Stonehouse
Cathy Stonehouse
(she/they) is a poet, writer, teacher andvisual artist in Vancouver, BC. The author of a novel,
The Causes
, a collectionof short fiction,
Something About the Animal
, and two previous collections ofpoetry—
Grace Shiver
and
The Words I Know
. Stonehouse co-edited theground-breaking anthology
Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood
and is a formereditor of
EVENT magazine
. They teach creative writing and interdisciplinaryexpressive arts at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recentwork compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book didn't change my life in the ways I naively expected itmight (i.e. entirely positively!). It was amazing, but also emotionallycomplicated. In fact, being published freaked me out so much I went silent for15 years, and I've been trying to reduce this effect with each book since. I'mgetting there. My most recent work, as a whole, is very different from my previouswork, in that I'm moving toward a more comfortably capacious andinterdisciplinary voice. I'm finally getting into my stride. A bit late, buthey ho.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornon-fiction?
Poetry has always been my first love. Sound, rhythm and musicality areeverything to me, even in prose. As a child I liked to read poems aloud even ifI didn't understand what they meant. Writing poems can feel like how I imaginebeing able to sing really well might feel (an experience I only have in dreams,then wake up). Whenever I write prose I look forward to the stage when I canrelate to the words and sentences as music again, i.e. when editing. I alsostart prose like this, but in the middle it's a heck of a lot of other work.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
It can take a very long time for me to finish a project, although I havenew ideas constantly. Work is often in my brain and/or notebooks for yearsbefore I have the space & time to manifest it, and sometimes revisions comeafter decades. This new book's main spine, the section called Dream House, camevery fast one summer (2018) after returning home from the UK having rapidlyemptied my mother's house. The rest of the book took a lot longer.
4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you anauthor of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are youworking on a "book" from the very beginning?
I work more and more in a long form--the sequence, the book-lengthwork--even with poetry and short stories. I get a kind of "feeling"of the work as a whole, then figure out the components.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Areyou the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love giving readings and would love to do more of them. As aneurodivergent introvert I get very nervous but once I read and listen toothers read it's quite exhilarating.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?
It changes from book to book. With the new book (Dream House) I'm tryingto use metaphor and other figurative language to render experiences of embodiment.How to address the trickiness of language which supposedly mediates isolation,yet so rapidly becomes cliché, and which, shortly after naming something, oftenbegins to mean something else? The interiority and exteriority of language, ofstructure, and of the poem. The difference between a home and a house. Arethese questions current? I don't know.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
I believe that consciously making language new, or using it in new andprecise ways, is critically important right now, as is tracking and recordingthe experience of human consciousness--because these are all practices whichcannot be carried out by AI. Humans may be on the verge of losing ordownloading their capacity to think and imagine, both in pictures and in language,if we are not careful (and we generally aren't). For these ancient practices tocontinue to emerge from the individual and collective human body we needartists, poets, musicians, dancers and thinkers. We also need arts funding,education and mentoring.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficultor essential (or both)?
Both. Essential, if I had to choose--being well edited is a deeplyaffirming if chastening experience.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily givento you directly)?
Don't get too attached to how the work is received, positively,negatively or not at all. Just keep doing the work and delivering it up, evenif it's just to yourself.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry toshort stories to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?
Too easy, perhaps. It's very bad for building a career because you dodgethe branding process and can appear to be starting over each time, even if thework is all very connected. But for me each genre provides a particularchallenge and opportunity, and they feed each other. Also, I'm a Gemini.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I have no real routine when I'm working (teaching) and even just living(parenting, dog-parenting, being a person in the world) but when I can I workbest first thing in the morning. That's the magical time.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for(for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I've been doing a lot of painting and drawing in the past few years andI find this tremendously helpful as a way to keep my creative practice alivewhen language and the literary feel too hard to enter. Painting is incrediblyhard but in a completely different way so it's very refreshing. Life drawing isalso great because there's no time to think, just do.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Warm toast, fresh ink and wet, slightly mildewy clothing.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?
Lately science has been inspirational to me. When I say science I reallymean nature, humility, looking, and in particular the work of Indigenous andother scholars and artists whose worldview is based on reciprocity andrelationship. Madhur Anand, Leanne Simpson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Suzanne Simard, Timothy Morton ...
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simplyyour life outside of your work?
Leslie Marmon Silko--especially the novels, Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead. All kinds of poets especially those working in longer forms. Lately,any amount of Will Alexander. Trans writing, writing about neurodivergence--anythingthat troubles the edges and binaries, undoes the commodification of art oridentity. Tove Jansson's Moominvalley inNovember. I reread it once every year.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'm working on writing and illustrating a graphic memoir, so that wouldbe one thing.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would itbe? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?
I may have begun in visual art and drifted into writing instead of viceversa. Once upon a time I wanted to cross the Atlantic single-handed but I haveterrible motion sickness; I also wanted to be an activist but I'm no good oncommittees.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Being silenced as a child.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?
Film: All the Beauty and theBloodshed, about photographer Nan Goldin. Book: Was It for This by Hannah Sullivan.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Aforementioned graphic memoir; a collection of linked short stories I'vebeen working on for a decade; some very "challenging" essays; aspeculative novel set in the English Civil War; another poetry-ish book aboutthe nervous system and the ecosystem. A painting of elephants.
